


An Absent Heart

by misantlery



Category: College of Magics - Caroline Stevermer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bittersweet, F/M, Pining, Post-College of Magics, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28306428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misantlery/pseuds/misantlery
Summary: In which the sealing of the rift comes with an even heavier price.
Relationships: Faris Nallaneen/Tyrian
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	An Absent Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tigrrmilk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigrrmilk/gifts).



The king's interest in Faris Nallaneen had been widely noted. Tyrian, who found himself wearing the king's shape, supposed that this was convenient. He could not at once erase his habit of watching her. He knew he looked up whenever her fiery hair lit the corner of his eye, and moved towards her if she seemed in danger of taking herself out of reach. What the court saw in it hurt his pride, but there were many things the court saw when it looked at him that hurt his pride. He was going to have to live with it.

The first few weeks after closing the rift, she looked inwards, and she looked outwards with a gaze that leapt leagues, but she only troubled herself to look around her when someone addressed her - Jane, Reed - or some inner voice prompted her in their stead. He wondered if the inner voice sounded like him. She barely looked at him.

And then she came to him and scoured him with her anguish. She declared to the mask he wore that _he_ was what was missing from her world.

It wasn't merely denial that caused him to doubt that. There was something else missing in the depths of her eyes.

* * *

She confessed as much, on the heights of Aravis Palatine, when he brought his own confession to her. It made him writhe inside with a kind of dangerous happiness to see her learn that he lived. Her gaze darted across his face, and he knew that she was taking in not the features of her unwanted royal suitor, but his own mannerisms; he was recognized for the first time in long dull weeks. But she was still regretful.

"I don't care that you're old now," she said, frankly and carelessly. "I'm the warden of the north. I can love whomever I please." The pause she placed there was precise. "Or I could, if I could love."

It didn't sound, for once, like arrogance, but he wasn't inclined to take such a statement on faith. "Are wardens set at a remove from the world by their duties, then?" he asked. "You never wanted to marry. How convenient."

She laughed at him, and then sighed. "No. I think I'm more in the world than ever. But I had so little with which to seal the rift, and all of it had to be mine. I gave up the wonder of first learning magic, and I gave up lands I barely remember longing for, and I gave..." Another pause, less artful. "There isn't another way of putting it. Tyrian," and the way she said his name convinced him in that moment, "I gave it my heart."

Hoarsely, he said, "I would believe that that would do it."

She said, "It was cruel of Hilarion. He must have known. He only gave you back yourself, and only half of yourself. And only half of me."

Tyrian closed his eyes and made himself speak lightly. "I still have a heart that loves you, and you still have the shape I am accustomed to loving," he said; "I think I have the better part of the bargain."

Her eyes gleamed, pleased with the flattery and something else; he wondered what he had conceded to her.

* * *

In the end, she used those words to get him into bed with her. No protestation about his bullish body and drooping lips, the blush dyed onto his cheeks by years of claret, or his limping steps could stand up to her knowledge that he wanted her, when she told him just as plainly that she wanted him. She knew she made him forget himself, for a time, when she coaxed him into making her laugh, and when the forgetting ended, it ended with Faris in his arms, sated and pleased with herself; she would not allow him not to be pleased with himself too.

They didn't speak of it, but both knew: she had hoped that, as if in a fairy tale, a kiss and more would thaw her. It didn't. Nothing they did together eased the faint chill that wrapped the world around, now, as if that numbness had been Galazon's last gift when Faris sent Galazon away.

She could smile at him, and seek out his company just to enjoy it as well as to consult on the diplomatic steps of the court's waltz. She could tease him, and bear Jane's teasing of her on the subject of him, and note when something under the surface troubled his calm. But it wasn't love. Love didn't forget so easily that he could be hurt, it wasn't distracted so deeply by matters near and far, and it was more vivid than this. What Faris Nallaneen knew of love was admittedly little, all acquired before the age of twenty-one, but she knew that this fell short.

In the early days of their reunion he had made bitter reference to his new advanced age and how much time remained to spend together. She was doing what she could about that with small and gradual magics, smoothing his skin and lightening his hair; perhaps they should set a new trend in royal vanity and commission official portraits of the king once, or even twice a year. With the time she could give him, age was not the spectre that loomed longest. It was how long they could go on before she broke his heart, and whether, when she did, she would care.

* * *

It wasn't until their second spring in Aravill that Faris made plans to travel. The Warden of the North had acquired a diplomatic circle almost as large as the one that revolved around Aravill's king, not entirely to her pleasure. Delicate negotiations had ended with Faris promising the British powers to use her own in search of the expedition to the Northward Passage that had been lost shortly after the previous northern warden's demise; although science had since forged ahead without magic in the person of Amundsen and his compatriots, explorers alone could not locate the lost ships and their logs, which the British were keen to recover.

The king made a public display of goodwill towards the Warden's mission by presenting her with a fine chronometer for her to travel with. Reports of this gesture - which travelled as far as Normandy, and the embassy in Helsinki - remarked on the king's attachment to the former Duchess of Galazon in political and personal terms. In private, Faris assured Tyrian, "Sit at your desk at the same time every day to write to me, and I'll look over your shoulder every day that I can."

Once, he had been inscrutable to her, feelings hidden behind his prized calm. Now there was nothing she did not see, even with her presence withdrawn.

* * *

They were gone five months from Easter. The fountains played in the gardens of Aravis; the icebergs clashed in the bitter north. The Warden adapted herself as best she could to the sea, an environment inimical to witches, and resolved not to share her successes with her former colleagues in magic; it would sound too much like bragging. The king sat at his writing desk and wrote of new political parties jostling to fill the Monarchists' gap, of how the crops did, of sitting for a new portrait. He wrote lines a cautious king would never have committed to the most discreet courier, but there was no need for that. The words warmed Faris' cheeks to read them. It was summer in Aravis, but when the king sat down to write, a cold breeze snaked about him, and when he finished each letter he threw it into a waiting fire.

For once, she missed him, and it hurt, and it seemed unfair to her that she was plagued with one remaining phantom pain when all other vivid feelings had faded away.

* * *

For the first time in her life, Faris had followed the wild geese flying north, and now that they turned south, she turned south too; perhaps that was what allowed her to stand steady on the deck of the ship, and sleep easily. She had done the North good. She did not realise, at first, that it had done her good too.

But she was given one warning, or blessing - one chance to understand what had changed in her, before the sight of Tyrian drove it home. It was the sight of Aravis Palpatine, glittering in the distance above the valley, crowning the dragon-back ridge.

It did not look the way it had the first time she had seen it. Then, winter smoke had wreathed and obscured the highest buildings; today all was bright and bared. But she understood what she was seeing and what it meant. She had given her first sight of the palace to the rift, nearly two years before. She had not thought that it, or any sight, could truly strike her with wonder again.

Before she thought of Tyrian, she thought of Galazon, its generous pastures and deep forests. If she looked to Galazon now, she would see a land that she could love. Its beauty, now, might be restored to her.

Her possession of it could never be.

The warden of the north did not travel alone, and yet, a witch of Greenlaw could be unobserved when she wanted to be. Faris' tears would have dismayed her former deportment mistress, but they were brief, and then she raised shining eyes again to Aravis, to find out what she would see when she disembarked the train and looked upon the king.


End file.
